Facebook’s focusing on India for its next big experiment, rolling out tools to help people shield their profile pictures from getting abused. The feature is currently working on a pilot basis and is set to roll out to more countries based on the company’s experience here.
In a blog post, Facebook says it’s been working on the new profile picture guard tools over the past year in association with Indian safety organizations like Breakthrough, Centre for Social Research, Learning Links Foundation, and Youth Ki Awaaz. Based on its research, it’s observed that Indian women commonly choose not to post profile photos which includes their face anywhere on the internet.
This is primarily because they’re worried about what may happen to their images. This is in fact a wide-ranging concern, since anyone can easily misuse a publicly available profile picture for their own purposes. To stop this from happening, people can now opt for Facebook’s new profile picture guard.
The profile picture guard option will appear on a person’s Facebook page complete with step-by-step guidance. Once it kicks in, no one will be able to download, share or send a user’s profile image in a message. Screenshots will be blocked wherever possible.
Moreover, people who aren’t friends with a person on Facebook can’t tag anyone in their profile photo, not even themselves. There’s also going to be a blue border and shield logo around a protected snap to indicate that it’s shielded from unwelcome manipulation.
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Finally, Facebook’s making a bunch of Indian textile-inspired designs available to members to place on top of their image. It’s hoping this serves as a deterrent to abusers since it discovered that people are 75% less likely to copy a picture if there’s a design layer blended with the photo.